Page 292 - GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Great Expectations

like to step in and hear a trial or so: informing me that he
could give me a front place for half-a-crown, whence I
should command a full view of the Lord Chief Justice in
his wig and robes - mentioning that awful personage like

waxwork, and presently offering him at the reduced price
of eighteenpence. As I declined the proposal on the plea of
an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard
and show me where the gallows was kept, and also where
people were publicly whipped, and then he showed me
the Debtors’ Door, out of which culprits came to be
hanged: heightening the interest of that dreadful portal by
giving me to understand that ‘four on ‘em’ would come
out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the
morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and
gave me a sickening idea of London: the more so as the
Lord Chief Justice’s proprietor wore (from his hat down to
his boots and up again to his pocket-handkerchief
inclusive) mildewed clothes, which had evidently not
belonged to him originally, and which, I took it into my
head, he had bought cheap of the executioner. Under
these circumstances I thought myself well rid of him for a
shilling.
I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had come
in yet, and I found he had not, and I strolled out again.

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